Email Elizabethva buyers
If Financing Options are Not FHA Nor VA
A few of my Sacramento home sellers have elected not to advertise their homes as available for sale with FHA nor VA terms. In other words, they want a cash or conventional offer. Apparently, this either sounds like a foreign concept to some or they just don’t care and will submit an FHA offer anyway, hoping the seller will change her mind.
After watching a few sellers lately reject FHA offers in hopes of a conventional or cash offer, I thought that it might be better to be completely upfront about the fact that some sellers don’t want FHA or VA. There is no point in listing a home for sale in Sacramento with FHA or VA terms if the seller plans to reject those offers in favor of conventional or cash. Because odds are in the seller’s favor, especially in this Sacramento seller’s market, that she will receive a conventional or cash offer. It seems the fairest and most effective way to honestly advertise a home is to eliminate those types of financing options from MLS when the seller doesn’t want to accept those types of offers. We don’t want to mislead a Sacramento REALTOR.
I realize some agents believe that agents routinely fail to note FHA or VA as financing options in MLS when they really meant to do so. This means that agents think other agents make mistakes. Sometimes, they do. But the odds still exist that when FHA and VA is not noted, then it is not available for that property.
I’ve had buyer’s agents call and try to talk me into accepting an FHA offer. They are relentless. They will write emails, too, and go into great detail all about the strengths of their buyer’s FHA offer, explaining what their buyer is willing to do in the event there are funding conditions, and they won’t take no for an answer when the answer is no.
I feel like saying: Read my lips. No, the answer is no. No FHA and no VA and no exceptions. I realize the market is tough for buyers, and that’s why I believe it is more important now than ever to accurately advertise a home and to not mislead buyers into thinking they have a chance to buy that home if they do not. I am not obligated to explain my seller’s reasoning when the answer is no. It’s just no. Accept it.
If you need a Sacramento real estate agent, call Elizabeth Weintraub, Broker, #00697006, with JaCi Wallace at RE/MAX #00773532 at 916.233.6759.
Three Things About the Sacramento Housing Market
As a blogging Sacramento agent, I try to narrow my blogs to a singular thought, but I have 3 things that keep popping up over and over in unison about home buyers in the Sacramento housing market — which, if I don’t discuss these 3 observations in one blog I might never get around to it. The first is the problem in Elk Grove. I’ve lost count of the number of offers I’ve negotiated for my last bunch of listings in Elk Grove that have fallen out and had to be sold a second, third or fourth time.
These buyers go into escrow and then immediately cancel, which tells me they are writing multiple offers when they can’t afford to buy each of the homes. Where do they get this idea? Do their agents encourage this kind of unethical behavior? Our market is not so hot that they need to do it. They can make an offer on the home they want to buy and probably buy it without competition.
I’ve seen some agents write into the offer that the buyer is making multiple offers, and I want to hug these guys. I’ve had other agents include an addendum that says the buyers are absolutely not writing any other offers and will wait for the offer negotiations to reach a conclusion before doing so. You guys can dance on my grave if you want.
The second thing I’ve noticed about the Sacramento housing market is VA buyers are becoming ubiquitous. I’ve always said if you want to buy a home with a VA loan come over and sit down next to me, and my sellers will gladly cooperate. I love love love VA buyers. Once you get a VA buyer into contract, they close and they don’t go wandering around open houses wondering if they’ve made the right decision. They understand what a commitment means. You can count on a VA buyer. They have integrity.
The third thing about the Sacramento housing market is about home pricing under the next price point. By this I mean pricing a home at $499K instead of $505K, for example. It could go one of two ways. Pricing at $499K might mean that home buyers will fight over it and bid up that price. On the other hand, a buyer might also lowball that price. They probably won’t offer $499K, though. It will be higher or it will be lower, and it’s not always easy to predict which way it will go, regardless of the home’s beauty and desirability.
In super hot seller markets in the past, a $499K listing would almost invariably sell for more. In buyer’s markets, it will fetch less. In this market, though, an agent can’t always accurately forecast because this is a fairly balanced market with no leanings either way, although our inventory is still relatively low. Inventory will get lower as we edge closer to Thanksgiving, but that’s a blog for another day.
